Critics Say Ballots Cast By Email Are Vulnerable to Tampering

Reporter

As next week’s election draws near, many Americans living abroad already may have cast their ballots in a new way: email.

For the first time in a presidential election, many states this year allow all overseas voters and military personnel to cast ballots by email. The option to cast votes using email, instead of the postal system, is part of a national push to make it easier for citizens living overseas-—particularly soldiers–to participate in elections. But critics, who include election officials, voting transparency groups and security researchers, say email voting could allow ballots to be intercepted and altered by hackers. Advocates believe the benefits of helping overseas citizens and soldiers receive and return ballots on time outweigh what they see as the remote risk of widespread tampering.

Increasing numbers of states have moved to create an email voting option for overseas residents since President Barack Obama signed the Military and Overseas Voter Empowerment Act in 2009. The bill called on states to give citizens living abroad more time to cast votes, and offer electronic transmission of blank ballots, either online, by fax or by email. The law did not, however, require states to accept completed ballots submitted electronically.

Sixteen states, along with the District of Columbia, now allow all overseas residents and military personnel to vote by email, according to the Verified Voting Foundation. While it’s not known how many military or overseas voters from these states may participate in next week’s election, around 189,000 people requested ballots in the 2008 election, according to a report from the U.S. Election Assistance Commission.

For example, Washington State’s more than 57,000 overseas and military voters are able to request that election officials send them blank ballots by email. After voters print out the ballot that is emailed to them, designate their choices by hand, and sign the document, they can return it to county election officials as a scanned document attached to an email. Voters also may choose to return ballots by mail or fax.

“We wanted to create a voting process that was as easy as possible for our overseas residents and recognizes the realities of military on the frontlines,” said Shane Hamlin, co-director of elections for Washington, which began offering the email option in 2010.

But others aren’t so sure the benefits outweigh the risks. Email is simply not secure enough for voting, said David Jefferson, a computer scientist at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, and board member of Verified Voting. Messages are transmitted in plain text across many servers as they transit between overseas voters and election officials, and each of those servers is a possible target for hackers who may steal passwords from network administrators or create a backdoor by installing malicious software.

Though it’s possible to send emails using encryption software, which makes the message indecipherable in transit, doing so requires that both parties use the same messaging software, or share a piece of software that allows the text to be decoded on both ends. Jefferson doesn’t know of any state program using encryption for email voting and says it would be too complicated for many voters.

Hackers who manage to intercept a ballot through email could manipulate the document to change the vote, while preserving the signature, said Jefferson. “The voter won’t know it’s been changed and the receiver, the election official, would have no way of knowing either.”

Though it’s possible for people to tamper with individual paper ballots sent by mail, Jefferson said, “the difference is you can’t steal a piece of mail remotely” and that compromised paper ballots would be easier to detect than altered digital images.

Doug Kellner, co-chair of New York’s board of elections, said he believed emailed ballots were “completely insecure,” and could lead to vote tampering on a “wholesale basis” through an attack like the one described by Jefferson.

“It’s not allowed in New York and for good reason,” Kellner said. “The jurisdictions that allow [email voting] have not adequately thought it though.”

Hamlin, the Washington State election official, acknowledges the risk of such an attack on emailed ballots is “low-to-moderate.” The networks used by county officials, where votes are sent, are protected by firewalls, Hamlin said, and the signature of every scanned ballot is checked against the voter’s registration card.

Despite the potential risks, Hamlin said his office and state lawmakers believe that it is important to give overseas personnel “more options and more time” to vote. For military personnel on the frontline or voters living in some developing countries, reliable international mail might not be available, Hamlin said.

Hamlin said relying on overseas mail presents its own risks. For example, earlier this week federal election officials contacted his state to warn that airport shutdowns, caused by Hurricane Sandy, could delay some overseas ballots. Hamlin said he was unsure of how the level of risk for conventional mail measured against the email option.

“They don’t have to vote by emailing the ballot back. They are free to and welcome to mail it back — it is totally at their option,” Hamlin said. “Since it’s an option, the voter is assuming some of that risk.”

The state first allowed vote-by-email in the 2010 mid-term elections and there were no reported problems, Hamlin says. “It gave us more confidence it works,” he said.

Correction: An earlier version of this story incorrectly stated that Washington has the largest population of overseas and military voters of any state. It has the the fifth-largest such population after California, New York, Texas and Florida.

Comments (3 of 3)

So which States Allow e-mail Ballots? Where is a List if you do not know.

4:25 pm November 1, 2012

Mark Eisen wrote:

Eventually, we will all have an email option, because everyone driving to vote is an environmental waste. No reason there can't be a face to face encounter via Skype; after all, matching a voter to a driver's license is only as good as a photo. For further security, the encounter can easily be recorded with the voter taking an oath, or since states now collect a thumbprint for a driver's license, that database can be tapped into and the voter can be equipped with a small reader at their end. This will happen. It's just a matter of time and cost.

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